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Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Kerr County voters to consider 75% jail capacity expansion in May

For a while, Texas' jail building spree seemed to recede, though there are still a few projects active. After all, as of Nov. 1, 2014 Texas jails had a roughly 42 percent vacancy rate, with 67,157 out of 95,309 beds filled statewide. So it's worth mentioning that Kerr County in May will hold the first significant Texas jail bond vote in several election cycles in order to expand local jail capacity by 75 percent. Reported Zeke MacCormack at the Express-News (Jan. 12):

Kerr County Commissioners signaled their intent Monday to seek voter
approval in May for a $15 million bond issue to expand the county’s
192-bed jail, where periodic overcrowding has long been a problem.

Plans call for a 144-bed wing to be built on the current jail’s west
side, in addition to expanding existing kitchen and laundry facilities,
adding restrooms in the sheriff’s office lobby and creating a larger
area for its communications staff.

The cost estimate of $14.8 million includes $12.5 million for
construction, $990,000 in professional fees, $750,000 for contingencies
and $400,000 for equipment and furniture.

If voters approve the project, Wayne Gondeck of DRG Architects said,
its actual cost won’t be known until bids are sought next fall. The new
jail could open in 2018.

The bonds would "add about 1.75 cents per $100 to the county’s property tax rate" for twenty years assuming property values rise as much as projected over time, MacCormack reported, though one wonders how they can predict that if the jail's "actual cost won't be known until bids are sought." Regardless, as of December 1, the county reported to the Commission on Jail Standards that 129 of the county's 192 beds were filled, down from 160 on July 1, 2014.

Kerr County's incarceration rate is higher than the statewide average in an era of declining crime. It seems highly likely new jail construction could be avoided or at least delayed if local officials better used tools available to them, from judges issuing more personal bonds to prosecutors facilitating pretrial diversion to police officers and deputies issuing citations, as authorized under law, for certain low-level Class B misdemeanors.

Kerr County had a population of just more than 40,000 in 1995 and a little less than 50,000 in 2013, according to the census, growing by roughly a quarter over those two decades. By comparison, the Kerr County jail population more than doubled between August 1995 (69) and August 2015 (157). So jail population growth isn't a function of the county's population growth, it's caused by decisions mainly by local prosecutors and judges to use the jail more aggressively than in the past for pretrial detention. In 1995, upward pressure on the jail population came more from detaining convicted felons awaiting transfer to TDCJ than felons awaiting trial; by 2015 that dynamic had flipped. Pretrial detainees went from 25 to 69 percent of a twice-as-large jail population.

Jail construction, at its root, is rarely a conservative or liberal issue. Consider: Is expanded pretrial detention liberal or conservative? While people think of conservatives as "tough on crime," in a sense there's nothing more "Big Government" than a jail, which is an institution designed to exercise total control over people's lives. Meanwhile, expanded pretrial detention empowers the government in plea bargains. And unnecessary jail expansion is frequently a major driver of local tax hikes, as voters in McLennan County could well attest.

Once a jail is built, it can be expensive to staff the extra space, creating ongoing budget burdens beyond just paying back the debt. For that reason, jails can become controversial among taxpayers, even if every Sheriff seems to want to leave behind their name on a new wing when they go. One recalls in Tyler voters rejected four different jail bond proposals on three different ballots, with competing "Tea Party" groups taking different sides, before county officials received the nod for radically scaled back plans.

Who knows if that kind of opposition will arise in smaller Kerr County? At a minimum, Grits hopes locals subject the proposal to close scrutiny and reject any entrepreneurial scheme that assumes future contract revenues (no hint of that from the press coverage). But more than that, Kerr County voters should take the opportunity to insist that county commissioners and the sheriff, as well as local prosecutors and the judiciary, do all they can to reduce unnecessary jail use, supporting staff and programming for community supervision as ardently as brick and mortar jail cells. Arguably, as in Smith and Harris counties, perhaps the best way voters can convey that message is to reject jail bonds and demand more emphasis on diversion programming before approving new construction debt.

15 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Good luck to the voters. I beat my head against a wall for years in Navarro County on this exact same issue when they thought they needed a new court to handle their "backlog" of cases. Of course, Judge "There was no agreement with the snitch" Jackson only tried a case a month on average for eight years, but thought he needed help with a backlog...

This is indeed a sad development but the sheriff has been rumbling about this for a year or more. The reason the jail is overcrowded is that KERR COUNTY LOCKS UP WAY TOO MANY PEOPLE. The jail is full of minor offenders and other pre-trial detainees who are not dangerous and are not flight risks. The probation departments are small and largely staffed with wanna-be cops who have no interest in keeping their people out of jail.

It's easy to beat up on the sheriff and he is indeed a real believer in incarceration, but unfortunately at least one of our district judges loves to lock people up too. Hopefully the citizens will not fund this boondoggle, otherwise Kerr County will be a real poster child for regressive policies in criminal justice.

Kerr County prosecutors use pretrial jailing as a method of punishment and means of coercing pleas for inmates sitting in the county jail on bonds they can't afford in lieu of actually trying cases. Just look at the number of inmates held pretrial for 100+ days. The local DA's have a trial backlog of hundreds of cases, yet on average less than 1 criminal felony trial happens per month.

It would seem more practical for Kerr County to leave the jail as it is, since Gillespie Count right next down is about to break ground on a new 10 million dollar jail and counties Kerr, Gillespie and Bandera have all housed overflow inmates as a courtesy to each other in the past. It would save voters' money.

I have to wonder what the commissioners in Kerr County have been smoking if they think a county with a population of 50,000 residents can support building a $14 million dollar jail. IMHO, it seems like the court system would be better advised to clean up the backlog of cases and reduce the current jail population instead of trying to see how many people they can lock up. But then, that seems to be a systemic problem in a lot of Texas counties who want to appear tough on crime, but in the end, its all about locking people up for no reason other than the fact they can and screw giving them their day in court. When only about 2/3rds of the total beds available are filled at any one time statewide, this sounds like there may be more going on here than meets the eye.

Sounds like Gillespie county is doing what I am reading about Kerr County. People that have actually made progress and functioning as positive members of society, established in school and attending classes for their situation on their own accord..... Ahhhh heck no, Gillespie is going to bring you back for minimal results and jail the person in prison. I am so glad to learn that these officials in Gillespie County have the ability to tell the future. I sure hope nothing befalls any of them in the future because heck, no you do not get to show you are making positive choices either.

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